February 1, 1896
Albert Jennings Fountain is agitated. It’s cold and windy, and his young son is coming down with a cold. Fountain is anxious to get the eight year old home to his mother, but his discomfort has more to do with three suspicious horseback riders who have been tailing him for some time.

These are not the first riders to trail him on this ride. Some 40 miles from Las Cruces, New Mexico, Fountain encountered the mail carrier on the way to Tularosa. Reining up, the postman had pulled alongside, and Fountain asked him, while pointing off in the distance: “Do you know who those horsemen are?”